


Nowhere Else But Here

by NamelesslyNightlock



Series: Going Down Swinging [28]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Thor: The Dark World, Desperation, Domestic Fluff, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feels, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Healing, Humor, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Light Angst, Loki (Marvel) Feels, Loki (Marvel) Lies, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Post-Avengers (2012), Romantic Fluff, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 14:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21078593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/pseuds/NamelesslyNightlock
Summary: Loki turns up on Tony’s doorstep half dead and desperate. Tony doesn’t know what happened to him, but it must have been bad if Loki had come to Tony for help. They were supposed to be enemies, after all.





	Nowhere Else But Here

**Author's Note:**

> It seems about time that I wrote this trope xD  
  
**Prompt**— _“Please help me.”_

After the mess in New York, after the portal and the aliens and the fucking Avengers, Tony thought that maybe he deserved a simple life. That maybe, just maybe he could have just a _little_ peace and quiet, some time to himself in Malibu.

Ha. As if.

There he was, minding his own business and working on something perfectly innocent in his workshop when JARVIS interrupted with the kind of suddenness that never _ever_ meant anything good.

“Sir,” JARVIS said. “Loki of Asgard is at the front door.”

Tony jerked upright, almost cracking his head on the underside of the car he had been working on.

“Sorry, say that again?” he asked. “_Who_ is _where?”_

“Loki of Asgard,” JARVIS repeated, “is at the front door.”

“Yeah, that makes even less sense than it did the first time,” Tony pointed out. “He’s supposed to be locked up—”

“Now he is ringing the doorbell, Sir,” JARVIS interrupted. “Shall I tell him that he is supposed to be locked up, or would you like to greet him yourself?”

There was nothing Tony wanted to do less, to be honest. But he couldn’t exactly just leave Loki there either, and he didn’t want to risk JARVIS making him angry– so he did the only thing he could, no matter how goddamn frustrating it was. He left his new little project for now, set aside his tools, slipped a gauntlet over his hand and headed up the stairs.

“JARVIS,” Tony said. “Have a suit on standby. I don’t want to spook him unnecessarily, but I don’t want to be stupid, either.”

“Of course not, Sir,” JARVIS said with a _touch_ of sarcasm, and Tony took the time to shoot the nearest camera a glare before taking the last few steps toward the door and opening it with a flourish.

But his prepared cocky greeting died on his lips the moment he caught sight of Loki’s sorry state.

Loki was wearing different armour to what Tony had seen him in before– something that was half-way between the casual black coat he had worn in Stark Tower during the invasion and the gold armour he had worn to fight. It was closer to the first, with a few extra tarnished gold adornments– but what was most striking about it was the large, smoking hole right over Loki’s stomach. Tony couldn’t see it properly though, because Loki had his hands pressed hard over the top of it, and he was bent over himself as he stared up at Tony with a desperate plea.

“Please help me,” Loki whispered hoarsely. “I don’t know where else to go.”

“Jesus,” Tony gasped, more shocked than anything—

And when Loki swayed and started to fall, it was instinctive to duck forward and catch him. Thankfully, Loki wasn’t entirely passed out because the guy was freaking _heavy_, and he managed to keep his footing well enough that Tony was able to steady them both.

Tony didn’t even consider the possibility that this was fake– the desperation in Loki’s tone was too raw for that. He merely supported Loki inside the house and over to the couch that ran along the length of the floor to ceiling windows in the living room of his mansion. Loki wouldn’t be able to see the view of the ocean, but Tony often found the sound of it soothing enough. Maybe Loki would, too.

There wasn’t really a graceful way to place Loki on the couch, and Tony just kind of had to drop him onto the cushions. Loki groaned, an awful, cutting sound that tore from his throat, and Tony winced at the sound of it.

“JARVIS?” Tony asked. “Have we got a med kit anywhere?”

“It is still in the workshop, Sir,” JARVIS said.

Ah, right. Yes, Tony had burned his arm while he was trying to test out a gauntlet that could fit inside a watch, and had left the first aid box on one of the workbenches.

Tony was a little hesitant to leave Loki alone, but honestly– it really didn’t look like the god was going anywhere anytime soon.

Tony still hurried though, taking the steps up and down two at a time. Then, cutting the leather away from Loki’s injury was harder than Tony thought it was going to be – the armour was probably made of something tougher than cow hide – but Tony managed it, and was left staring.

Loki’s wound was worse than it looked– whatever had made it had been thick and not particularly sharp, and it had _punched_ rather than sliced a hole through Loki’s middle. Honestly, it was something of a miracle that Loki had survived. Surely even gods had limits.

“I think you might need to go to a hospital,” Tony said. “This is a little bit outside my skillset.”

“I merely require a place of rest,” Loki said. “Once my seiðr has recovered enough from the battle, I will be fine.”

“The _battle?_” Tony asked incredulously. “What kind of a dungeon does Asgard _have_, if there are battles? Or– wait, did you escape in a blaze of violence and kill Thor on the way out? Because I mean, the guy didn’t make a _glowing_ impression on me, but he was my teammate for a bit and if you did, I’m going to have to rethink my decision to—”

“Do you always talk this much?” Loki groaned.

“When I’m nervous, yes,” Tony said.

“You must be nervous far more often than I realise, Sir,” JARVIS commented.

“Oh, shut it,” Tony said– though his tone was fond.

Even though Loki had said that his – seiðr? That was his magic, right? – would heal the injury in time, Tony still didn’t like the look of it. So he cleaned it out as best he could, ignoring the hissing and spitting that Loki was doing in his ear– at least until Loki said something truly foul involving Tony, a bilgesnipe, something called _Gungnir_ and a few curse words that Tony _did_ understand.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the creativity, but don’t you think you’re being a bit over the top?” Tony asked. “I need to clean it. Goodness knows what you had in here, but I doubt it was hygienic—”

“It was a blade belonging to a Dark Elf,” Loki muttered.

Tony paused for a moment. “…Right. And do ‘Dark Elves’ keep their blades sterilised?”

Loki groaned, and threw his head back against the arm of the couch.

“Didn’t think so,” Tony said brightly. “And you know, I’m doing this entirely out of the goodness of my own heart. I totally could have just thrown you out onto my driveway, but since I am a _good person—” _

“That is debatable at this moment,” Loki growled. “Good people do not torture their houseguests—”

“Are you a houseguest if you just wandered in by yourself?” Tony asked curiously. “You’re kind of more like a stray cat.”

Loki threw a pillow at him for that, clearly mustering up the energy to do so on pure spite alone. But hey, at least he stopped his complaining.

Despite Loki’s insistence that he was going to be fine, his condition only seemed to worsen as the hours passed. Tony didn’t head back down to the workshop, and he found himself unable to concentrate, pacing back and forth through the living room, and staying close to the couch as much as he possibly could.

When Loki gained a fever, Tony swapped out cold cloths on his head, and tried to get as much water past his lips as he could.

He just felt so _helpless_.

Sitting there, seeing Loki looking so very vulnerable… well, it was hard, and it tugged at Tony’s moral sensibilities in a way that would probably worry a few people. Because, lying there on the couch, Loki didn’t look like a would-be conqueror.

He just… he looked like a _person_, and Tony found himself glad that he hadn’t just thrown Loki out to the curb. He still didn’t know what had happened but, whatever it was, it must have been bad if Loki had come to Tony for help.

They were supposed to be enemies, after all.

—

Even after the fever broke, Loki’s recovery was slow, taking far longer than Tony had expected that it would. After all, he had _seen_ what Loki was capable of in terms of healing– the guy had been smashed by the Hulk, had every bone in his body broken, and then been capable of walking out of the penthouse just over an hour later.

The only explanation Tony had was that the blade the Dark Elf had used was poisoned or _cursed_ or something, but he had no freaking clue _how_ he was supposed to deal with that. When he asked Loki about it, at first the god was a little cagey. But as time went by, as they began to grow to know each other, talking and joking and almost beginning to forget how the whole thing had started, Loki began to open up just a little more and actually answer some of Tony’s questions.

“The blade wasn’t cursed,” Loki replied, almost sounding a little amused by the prospect.

“Then why isn’t it healing?” Tony asked, frustrated– though he told himself that was due to the annoyance at being bested by a _wound_, and the irritation at not being able to solve a problem. “I don’t know what else I can do. You’re healing faster than a human but slower than I’ve seen you heal before—”

“It _is_ healing,” Loki insisted, the amusement melting away to be replaced by a terse tone. “And as soon as my seiðr has built back up, it will heal faster.”

“Did you use a lot of your seiðr in the fight, then?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Loki replied, something relieved entering his gaze. “That’s it.”

Tony didn’t say anything else, though his suspicions were more than piqued.

Because if the only issue was tiredness and overuse of magic, then… why had Loki healed so quickly in New York? He had used a lot of magic then, certainly more than the few illusions Loki had admitted to using against the Dark Elf. So either Loki was hiding the extent of that fight, or… he was hiding something else.

As the days continued to pass, Tony was able to tease out more of the story, and it only left him feeling horrified. Loki had sacrificed himself to save Thor, and then had been left alone on a planet by himself, with nowhere to go but the home of one of his enemies– someone who Loki hoped would be kind enough to help.

Tony could admit that he did feel a _little_ guilty about the fact that Thor probably thought his brother was dead, and that Tony could wipe away Thor’s grief with just a single word. But Tony couldn’t help but wonder whether Loki had a good reason to keep his status as a living and breathing person a secret, and… well, Loki was lying unconscious on Tony’s couch. He’d tell Thor the truth when Loki was at least _conscious_. Then Tony didn’t have to feel so goddamn guilty about everything.

But the truth is… Tony actually _enjoyed_ having Loki as a houseguest. Oh, he was about as difficult as Tony would have expected a bedridden prince to be, complaining about the food and about being bored– and yet, it was incredibly clear that he was grateful throughout it all. Most of the complaining was done as a tease, and he always ate whatever Tony put in front of him. Talking to Loki was always fun– he was witty and intelligent and some of his ideas were _insane_. There were a few days when Tony even helped Loki down to the workshop, so that they could try a few of his suggestions out.

Slowly, Tony realised that they had become friends– although, he knew that would likely change when Loki left, when they would inevitably go back to being enemies once again.

Tony began to wish that maybe Loki could stay a little longer, and then he felt like a horrible person for even having the thought because that meant he was essentially wishing for Loki to heal _slower_. And he didn’t want that, he wanted Loki to get better.

Every time Loki needed Tony’s help to get to the bathroom, or to move from the couch to the bedroom that Tony was letting him use, or to the workshop or the kitchen– Tony could see the frustration in his gaze, and he knew that Loki hated not being able to do everything for himself, that he hated needing to rely on Tony for even the most simple of things. Tony just… well, over the course of a few conversations and several days, Tony had somehow come to just want to see Loki smile.

And once he realised that, it wasn’t much of a leap for him to realise that he didn’t just want Loki to stay so that they could continue their easy dynamic, their delightful banter, and their days of infectious conversations, though that certainly played a part. It was the way that Loki made him laugh, the way that Loki’s smile seemed so much brighter when it wasn’t shadowed by their being on opposing sides, and the way that he seemed to understand Tony more than anyone else ever could. And even beyond that, Tony knew that he wanted Loki to stay because he didn’t _want_ to go back to what they were before, but nor did he want to continue as friends. He wanted Loki to stay because he wanted _more_ than that.

It was of course just the way of the universe that as soon as Tony realised why he didn’t want Loki to leave that it became possible for Loki to do so.

They had been perched beside each other on the ratty couch in the workshop, with Loki actually properly _sitting_ since his wound had just healed enough for him to do so without pulling at it. They were dealing with a slight situation– DUM-E had tried to pat Loki’s head as Loki had done to him and had managed to get his claw tangled in Loki’s hair. It had taken Tony a good quarter hour to get everyone detached unharmed– because even though Tony might have _joked_ about cutting Loki’s hair short to solve the problem, he never would have actually _done_ it. Loki’s hair was soft as it slipped through his fingers, and he took extra care not to tug at it as he pulled the strands from DUM-E’s moving parts.

Tony was so focused on the task that he didn’t notice just how close they had become until he glanced back to Loki with a grin of triumph– and then he realised that he was leaning over Loki’s lap, their faces less than an inch apart.

And Loki had been staring at Tony with an odd look in his eye, almost wistful– but when he saw that Tony was looking down at him, he swallowed and leaned away.

“This has gone on too long,” Loki whispered– and then he closed his eyes, and a soft green glow spread over his skin. It changed his clothes from the sweats and T-shirt ensemble that Tony had lent him to a black coat and leather pants that was softer than his armour, but still obviously Asgardian.

“You’re better,” Tony said with a frown, his hands falling first to Loki’s shoulders and then curling around the lapels of his coat. “That was… sudden.”

“I have taken advantage of your hospitality far too long,” Loki said. “I… I admit that I may have stayed longer than necessary.”

Tony narrowed his eyes, his earlier suspicions all but confirmed. “Hang on. When did your magic strengthen enough to heal you, exactly?”

“Almost a week ago,” Loki admitted, his eyes downcast.

Tony was initially a little bit hurt, because although he’d made his guesses that Loki had been hiding something, he had hoped that he was wrong, that Loki would have trusted him enough since they had become somewhat friends to tell him the truth. But he was more than willing to offer Loki the benefit of the doubt, at least now– while Loki _was_ offering honesty unprompted. But before he could ask, Loki was speaking again.

“You saved my life, of that I have no doubt,” Loki said. “Without your help, I would have been forced to suffer alone. I owe you everything.”

“Then tell me the truth,” Tony whispered.

Loki drew in a breath. “What would you like to know?”

That was a loaded question– because somehow Tony was _sure_ that Loki would be more than willing to answer any query that Tony dared to voice. And Tony felt like his breath was caught in his throat, because as much as he wanted to jump in and demand to know why Loki had lied, he had almost begun to untangle what all of this could mean.

Loki’s magic had returned _days_ ago– he could have left, gone out into the universe and claimed the freedom that his apparent death in Thor’s arms would grant him. But… Loki _hadn’t_. For some reason, he had _chosen_ not to heal himself and had remained on Tony’s couch, had stayed put where there was a risk of discovery for reasons that…

Well. Tony had an idea of _why_ that might be, but he didn’t want to believe it, not until Loki confirmed it. Because if he began to allow himself to hope, and then Loki just up and left…

That would hurt more than Tony thought that he could bear.

So, instead of hoping, Tony knuckled down and asked the question.

“Loki, just answer me one thing,” Tony said, holding Loki’s gaze. “Why did you stay?”

Rather than tensing, or glancing away, Loki simply smiled at the question– and that settled Tony more than anything else could have. Because Loki _could_ leave. Right now, Tony knew that Loki had nothing to lose– realistically, neither of them did. Because if Loki left right now, then… well, it might hurt, but they would recover, they would go back to being how they were before. They hadn’t had enough of a taste to truly _want_, after all.

But the potential was there– the potential for something amazing, should they both decide to pursue it.

Tony knew that neither of them were particularly careful people. They both reached out and grabbed on to what they wanted with both hands, battling the consequences along the way and enjoying the fight just as much as the reward at the end. Neither of them were the kind to let an opportunity pass just because the journey would be _risky_.

And when Loki finally gave his answer, Tony knew that he could trust it– because he had already worked it out.

“I stayed because I wanted to,” Loki whispered. “Because I enjoy spending time with you, even while I am injured. And because I did not want this time to come to an end.”

It wasn’t a confirmation, but it was more than close enough– and using his tight grip on Loki’s coat Tony pulled him down into a kiss.

Loki’s gasp was surprised, but Tony just continued to coax Loki’s lips with his own until Loki began to kiss him back. Tony grinned into the kiss as he felt Loki’s arms curl around his waist, and he was still smiling as he rocked back, the kiss coming to a premature end that neither of them had particularly wanted– but that Tony knew was somewhat necessary.

He was proven right when he saw that Loki’s expression was still a little hesitant.

“Anthony,” Loki whispered. “Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to,” Tony echoed. “And because I think that maybe you wanted me to as well. Was I wrong?”

Loki’s lips turned up into a smile, his hesitation melting away as he leaned back down. “No,” he breathed. “You’re certainly not wrong.”

It had to be one of the most unconventional starts to a relationship, and yet, at the same time, it was one of the oldest stories in the book. Loki had come to ask Tony for help because he felt like it was the only place he _could–_ Tony had been a last hope, he knew that. But now, he knew that he had become Loki’s first choice, and that was more precious than mere words could ever hope to describe.


End file.
